Vacaville council to ponder Brighton Landing EIR approval

VACAVILLE — The Vacaville City Council on Tuesday will weigh how much of an impact the proposed 767-home Brighton Landing development will have on the area around Leisure Town Road and Elmira Road if it is built.

The developer, The Sares-Regis Group, wants to build 767 single-family homes on 230 acres on the southeast corner of Leisure Town Road and Elmira Road. The project also proposes to build a private Catholic high school, set aside 11 acres for an elementary school and put in a six-acre park.

Brighton Beach is the only part of an area that is already inside city limits that is being considered for future urban growth in the city’s General Plan.

The EIR states that there are 46 potentially significant impacts, which the city’s planners say in the EIR are being avoided or reduced to a less-than-significant level.

City planners recommend the council approve the EIR. The Vacaville Planning Commission already gave its endorsement in a 6-0 vote at its Dec. 18, 2012, meeting.

The impacts include concerns on how the development will affect response times from fire and police departments, generate light glare that will affect homes, construction noise created during its creation and traffic noise created by the future residents, as well as the air quality and biological impacts to riparian habitats such as the old course of Alamo Creek, part of which is planned to be moved under ground.

Some of the development’s traffic impacts can only be mitigated by the completion of the Jepson Parkway project, which includes widening Leisure Town Road to four lanes along its length. Brighton Landing’s mitigation is providing right of way and mitigation fees, according to the EIR.

“The level of impacts such as these would be weighed against the potential benefits to the community in deciding whether to accept the interim condition as acceptable,” the report states.

Vacaville and the Solano Irrigation District have reached agreements on conservation issues and changing the agricultural buffer as it pertains to Brighton Landing, but are still negotiating how to amend the Master Water Agreement with regard to water service to the development.

Brighton Landing’s supporters say it will create more moderate and upper-moderate housing for Vacaville as well as generate more income for the city.

Reach Ian Thompson at 427-6976 or [email protected] Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ithompsondr.

Vacaville City Council

What: Public hearing on Brighton Landing environmental impact report

Where: Vacaville City Council chambers, 650 Merchant St.

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday

Ian Thompson

Ian Thompson has worked for the Daily Republic longer than he cares to remember. A native of Oregon and a graduate of the University of Oregon, he pines for the motherland still. He covers Vacaville and Travis Air Force Base for the Daily Republic. He is an avid military history buff, wargamer and loves the great outdoors.